CD 9 of the Feedback series is devoted to Johannes Fritsch’s early chamber works, most of them written before the Feedback Studio was founded. The works mark the beginning of Fritsch’s artistic career, reflect the many facets of his composing and are at the same time documents of the 1960s. Bestandteile des Vorüber (1962), for instance, leans on surrealist chance composition, while Ikonen (1964) and Modulation I (1966) point towards postmodern techniques of symbiosis.
The Feedback Studio
After months of working with Karlheinz Stockhausen at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka, the three composers Johannes Fritsch, Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson resolved to strike out on their own. In 1970 they founded the Feedback Studio: an independent, private electronic studio. A year later Fritsch and Gehlhaar founded the Feedback Studio Verlag, the first German publishing house run by composers. Studio and publishing house were housed in a rear building in Cologne’s Belgisches Viertel, where in 1967 Fritsch had set up a private studio under the roof. Neither studio nor publishing house saw itself as a commercial enterprise, but rather as an artists’ cooperative and an alternative centre for music. The publishing house represented up to 300 compositions by 20 composers. Besides electronic and live electronic works, computer compositions and works for large orchestra, its catalogue consisted above all of chamber music — by composers such as Klarenz Barlow, Michael von Biel, Peter Eötvös, Johannes Fritsch, Rolf Gehlhaar, Caspar Johannes Walter and many more. The Feedback Papers, a series of 46 issues and books in all, document in news items, information, project descriptions, analyses and essays not only the history of the Feedback Studio but also offer a view of their own on the history of new music, away from the philharmonic main roads and the established festivals.
After Fritsch’s death in 2010 the Feedback Studio Verlag was dissolved. Feedback Papers and CDs still in stock have passed to the edition johannes fritsch (www.editionjohannesfritsch.de). All the historical documents — source tapes, tape recordings of the Hinterhausmusiken, correspondence and historical equipment — are held in the music archive of the Akademie der Künste (www.adk.de) in Berlin.